Bad Conscience Read online

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © 1984, 2014 Michel Quint

  Translation copyright © 2015 Alexis Pernsteiner

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Previously published as Mauvise Conscience by Fleuve Noir in France in 1984. Translated from French by Alexis Pernsteiner. First published in English by AmazonCrossing in 2015.

  Published by AmazonCrossing, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and AmazonCrossing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781477829523

  ISBN-10: 1477829520

  Cover design by Marc J. Cohen

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2014920804

  For Patrick Mosconi

  CONTENTS

  START READING

  CHAPTER I

  CHAPTER II

  CHAPTER III

  CHAPTER IV

  CHAPTER V

  CHAPTER VI

  CHAPTER VII

  CHAPTER VIII

  CHAPTER IX

  CHAPTER X

  CHAPTER XI

  CHAPTER XII

  CHAPTER XIII

  CHAPTER XIV

  CHAPTER XV

  CHAPTER XVI

  CHAPTER XVII

  CHAPTER XVIII

  CHAPTER XIX

  CHAPTER XX

  CHAPTER XXI

  CHAPTER XXII

  CHAPTER XXIII

  CHAPTER XXIV

  CHAPTER XXV

  CHAPTER XXVI

  CHAPTER XXVII

  CHAPTER XXVIII

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR

  That there were a great many robberies and wicked practices committed even in this dreadful time, I do not deny. The power of avarice was so strong in some that they would run any hazard to steal and to plunder.

  Daniel Defoe, A Journal of the Plague Year 1664–1665

  CHAPTER I

  Aix-en-Provence

  Saturday, August 16, 8:03 a.m.

  P.J. was drawn up with the hot air balloon. Watching it turn in circles against the blue sky, he felt his feet leaving the ground. The world tilted, its rotation accelerating at a dizzying speed.

  This took place on Saturday, August the sixteenth, early in the morning, around eight o’clock. In the hilly terrain surrounding Paul Cézanne High School in Aix-en-Provence, Paul-Jacques Sinibaldi was living his usual burned-out and boozy early-morning adventure. The dream of the hot air balloon, which drew him into space and somehow got mixed up with the world on the ground, as if the universe were throwing him overboard, usually made him wake up in a fit of nausea. This time, however, an abyss opened up beneath P.J., and he fell into it.

  It was the shock of the fall as much as the noise it caused that tore him from his sleep. Even though he was immediately aware of being in his room, in his apartment, under the skies of Aix, the nightmare wasn’t over.

  The dream world had just crashed into everyday life, shattering it to pieces, the ensuing stillness troubled only by the echo of a low rumble. The furniture in the room, reflecting the sudden commotion, was turned upside down. P.J. owed his salvation to the fact that he had somehow fallen between the bed and the monumental armoire, its bronze lock, he was now noticing, just inches from his nose. He quickly wriggled out of the confines of his sheets. In the insufferable liquidity of the summer heat, P.J. noticed vibrations that seemed to be coming from him. They reminded him of being on a deserted train platform following a train’s departure.

  Clouds of dust rose up behind the open windows, and yet the leaves on the Catalpa tree outside remained perfectly still. The long green beans that made the tree look like a field marshal decked in aiguillettes did not even tremble.

  P.J. stood and went to the balcony. If the young lady in apartment C4, who lived on the generosity of numerous admirers, had brought her freckled face out onto her balcony, she would have seen P.J.’s tan and muscled six-foot-tall naked body, his bright face and brown mustache. She would have been surprised to see the look of panic in his eyes.

  But the pretty redhead would never feel the tug of desire for anyone again. The block of concrete pushing into her chest had mutilated her ample bosom and crushed her tender heart. Blood had spurted like red lacquer onto the expensive suit lying next to her bed, as if the woman had spilled nail polish on her companion’s clothes. The earthquake responsible for this giant mess measured 8.0 on the Richter scale, throwing all of Provence into an apocalyptic panic.

  Flabbergasted, P.J. surveyed the residential complex surrounding his apartment. He couldn’t make out anything at first. It had all melted together. The soft hills looked like a cake left out in the sun after a picnic. He didn’t see the uprooted pine trees, the sagging blackberry bushes, the dying cedars. A fog of suspended particles, of white and brown dust, hung like a screen over the parking lots, hiding the flattened and overturned cars, the crumbled, cracked, and fatally wounded buildings. All he could see were blurry shapes as the morning sun streaked through the fog. There was the sound of yelling, shrieking, and the distant cry of sirens.

  P.J. got a hold of himself and took a step back from the scene, realizing he’d been contemplating it as if it were a painting. He noticed that Building A—his building—was creaking. Rushing through his apartment, he twisted his ankle on a piece of craggy concrete. In the east, the sun, that giant captive balloon, seemed to be pulling on its string in an attempt to flee this nightmare.

  Ettore Muginello had once been a midfielder, and boy could he play! He had twice been selected for the French national soccer team. With his club, he’d won two French championship titles and one Coupe de France. That hot summer on the French Riviera had been his one and only experience at the Coupe de France, the stadium located just a stone’s throw from the two-bedroom apartment where Ettore’s four kids lived. In his hour of glory, he’d scored the winning goal in the final round of the cup.

  He hadn’t paid for a single pastis or glass of champagne during the entire month-long off-season. He’d gotten the best tables, the ones where he could see and be seen! If he so much as reached for his wallet, people got upset. He’d been offered a sponsorship by a major sporting goods store. He’d turned it down. In those days, Ettore wasn’t thinking about retirement; he would always be on top, and money would never be a problem. He could make it without breaking a sweat. “Just like that,” he’d say, snapping his fingers.

  But there had been one pleasure that cost money: women. As more and more of them sought out his company, he’d had to start playing the part of a gentleman and offer baubles, like rubies and Bohemian crystals. He’d run through his bonuses and even his salary.

  He’d realized how fragile his powers of seduction really were when one day the club doctor’s wife (a slightly masculine but extremely elegant short-haired brunette, whom he liked to screw upright against the briefing room’s blackboard) refused to lend him five hundred francs. As he’d lain naked across her marital bed, she’d called out to him from the bathroom, her tone haughty:

  “Christ, Ettore, if you want a woman to give you money, you shouldn’t be screwing her, you should be getting other men to screw her!”

  And when a cleat had ripped into a shin that
had already been injured, crushing his kneecap at the same time, he’d remembered the adulterous woman’s salty words and put her maxim to work.

  Ettore had once been a midfielder. Now he had another line of work.

  He had the build of a Roman senator, and that, together with tough love (forced vacations in an isolated cabin), had been enough to transform some of his groupies into charming escorts. In all, twelve young women—as a soccer player, he considered this number felicitous—paid him dividends on the money that generous men spontaneously gave them. Some naysayers claimed that he owed his business to drugs and the overpriced service he offered to friends looking to unload illicit product in exchange for clean money. But his employees loved him! He invested in his business, providing a luxury setup for his team—with the aim of making more money, of course. He even had a credible front for his girls’ weekly visits to his office and the exchange of money: “Ettore Muginello. Investment Consultant.”

  Every Monday at noon sharp, he held a staff meeting during which his employees reported their earnings and, occasionally, their grievances. Seated at his Florentine marquetry desk, he did a precise accounting, recording the numbers in his own code into a tiny notebook that he always kept on his person. Then, he relayed his percentage to each girl. Finally, he opened the meeting to comments and suggestions. Once, one very productive, high-earning blonde dared to speak up and complain about a slightly violent customer who liked to bite into her backside. A real animal! Ettore’s response: he hit the girl.

  Ettore’s business was booming and his girls were at the top of their league. He could even retain the exclusive services of his twelfth player, Martine. She was a star. Ettore had brought her over from Martigues, a town near Marseille, which hadn’t been cheap. Jo, Martine’s former boss, hadn’t been happy to see her go. Ettore had installed the little gem in his apartment on Aix’s main thoroughfare, the Cours Mirabeau. He lived above a jewelry shop, whose owner he saluted every day. The owner was always polite, asking Ettore to convey his regards to his wife. He probably hadn’t forgotten the afternoon Ettore had spent a week’s worth of revenue on a welcome gift for Martine. To the jeweler, it had been nothing, a bagatelle: a diamond set on white gold. Maybe what the shopkeeper hadn’t forgotten were Martine’s breasts.

  Ettore was still thinking of them as he got up that morning, throwing the cat off the covers and nearly stepping on him. Martine, naked under the blue-striped sheets, was snoring. The night before, they’d had friends over, and Martine had gone to bed, still clothed, at three in the morning. Ettore had undressed her before going to sleep. Now, his stomach was heaving from the alcohol, so he went to his rococo bathroom. The whole apartment was rococo: spiral columns, gilded bronzes, and pastel polychrome.

  That morning in the bathroom, Ettore, sweating profusely, wondered if he’d come down with dysentery and was slowly crapping himself to death, thanks to this goddamn muggy weather. He felt a wave of nausea, and the little angels painted on the bathroom door by an eighteenth-century German artist began to tremble. Then the door flew open in a thunderous roar.

  Barely upright—barely wiped—he suddenly understood what was happening.

  “An earthquake! Martiiine!”

  As he stumbled out of the bathroom, his feet got caught in his crumpled pajama bottoms, and he fell hard against the Italian dresser. Screaming, surrounded by dust and the Havana cigars that had spilled out of the dresser’s top drawer: this is how Martine, still naked, like all beauties torn from sleep, found him.

  CHAPTER II

  Aix-en-Provence

  Saturday, August 16, 8:10 a.m.

  P.J.’s mind strained to recreate a clear image of his current environment.

  The wound on his foot didn’t look serious. It wasn’t even bleeding anymore.

  Oddly, he seemed to have already accepted the ambient chaos. In a rush, he threw on a pair of jeans, a polo shirt, a light jacket, and his sneakers. He considered using his electric razor but immediately realized that, given the situation, the task would be both ridiculous and impossible. The neon light above the sink refused to turn on.

  As he was coming out of the bathroom, he heard a moan coming from the hallway outside, which put the disaster into sharp focus. P.J. knew the quake had been bad and that there was likely a lot of irreparable damage. Still, he was subconsciously reassured by the fact that he was okay, and he had trouble imagining Aix in ruins. He scraped together all the money he could find—from various drawers and hiding places throughout his apartment—and tried to picture the city as it probably was: smoking, in ashes, like Berlin seen from U.S. Army jeeps during the war.

  Before leaving, P.J. surveyed the rooms of his apartment, taking in the rubble and the overturned furniture, picking up a variety of loose papers. The kitchen had been obliterated. At least that’s what he assumed. A heavy piece of concrete blocked its entrance, and he couldn’t manage to push it aside to have a look. An unfamiliar rug was hanging from a gaping hole in the ceiling, through which he could see the living room of the couple who lived upstairs, the Lavergnes, both retired schoolteachers. A number of their possessions had fallen into his apartment.

  His bedrooms weren’t much better off. The walls were still intact, showing hardly a crack, but the plaster had crumbled, exposing protrusions of electrical wiring. P.J. hoped the building’s gas line hadn’t broken. Had the super been able to shut off the gas? P.J. didn’t dare set foot in the kids’ rooms. The floor in his son Paul’s room looked like a bunch of rocks thrown on top of scrap metal, and he was afraid it might collapse. Nathalie’s room resembled a milk carton fallen out of a shopping cart—a smashed piece of trash.

  Thank God P.J. was alone in the apartment, as usual. His kids and Valérie, his wife, lived in Pierrevert and only visited occasionally. Valérie was fond of her independence and their life there was calmer, sweeter. Their real house was a beautiful Provençal villa. Surrounded by vineyards, it lay at the end of a pale-yellow stone road and it had a swimming pool. P.J. spent every weekend there with his family. He had been planning on returning home that very day for a two-week vacation. Pierrevert was only a forty-minute drive from Aix.

  As P.J. was searching the living room’s chest of drawers, where there was usually cash lying around, the whole apartment building began to tremble like an autumn leaf.

  He had to get out of there! P.J. pocketed his ID, a checkbook, some useless credit cards, and a few bills, then headed toward the front door, which he shook and banged and insulted. He succeeded only at tearing off the wrought-iron door handle. P.J. finally noticed that the door had managed to wedge itself into its frame in such a way that the wood had become as solid and immovable as a slab of granite.

  Jumping from the fifth-floor balcony was out of the question. What about escaping like a prisoner and making a rope out of sheets? The sheets would be strong enough to support P.J., but would such a maneuver break the railing?

  P.J.’s eyes wandered to the floor above, taking in the color TV dangling from the hole in the Lavergnes’ apartment. Maybe he would have to go up in order to get out? He built a makeshift ladder out of chairs. As he climbed the rickety construction, the television swayed and fell with a bang. The sound was absorbed by the building’s rumblings and the isolated shrieking of survivors, these noises swollen like the heat of a storm.

  The Lavergne apartment offered the same spectacle of devastation. Mr. Lavergne was splayed out across the balcony’s collapsed sliding door, trying to drag himself inside the room. The old man was intact but pale, tears streaming down his cheeks and into his mouth. The rest of his body was covered in blood. P.J.’s head spun when he noticed that the man was missing his right foot. It had been severed by the fall of the balcony from the floor above. Mr. Lavergne’s life was flowing out of him. When he saw P.J. kneeling next to him, he gave up the fight and died silently, then and there, his head resting on P.J.’s forearm. P.J. gently closed the man’s eyeli
ds. Two clear tears hung on his lashes before sliding into his white hair.

  The balcony had disappeared from the other side of the window. In its descent, the sixth-floor balcony had dislodged those of the fifth and second floors. Mr. and Mrs. Lavergne had no doubt been enjoying their breakfast in the sun. Mr. Lavergne had been standing in the doorway and hadn’t fallen outside, but his wife had received the brunt of the plummeting balcony. P.J. peered down at the wreckage and spotted a vague shape that he took to be Mrs. Lavergne’s prune-colored bathrobe. Getting a hold of himself, he quickly made his way to the front door, which he found open. The earthquake had torn it from its hinges.

  The scene seemed less threatening in the shared hallway than inside the apartments, maybe because of the hallway’s impersonal decoration.

  P.J. didn’t stop to check on anything else. His sole aim: go to Pierrevert and reunite with Valérie and his children. In order to do that, he had to get out of the building and find his Alpine A310, which was parked in front of the short walkway linking buildings A and B.

  He hesitated for a second between the elevator and the stairs, glancing briefly into the gaping elevator shaft. Some cables had snapped, metallic tendrils forming a crown of blackened thorns over the immobilized cab.

  His only option was the staircase. The residents usually used the elevator. P.J. was forced to put his trust in the dark stairwell and the tiny steps spiraling around a concrete cylinder. The light and flexible structure was wounded but not broken. Some of the steps were out of place, others were kind of hanging, but the spinal column was intact, if slightly affected by scoliosis.

  P.J. carefully made his way down to the ground floor. The building was now filled with horrible sounds— muffled shrieks, whistles, cracks from the world outside. Quivering noises ricocheted off the low hills, sending echoes through the complex’s gaping wounds. Sweating in the shadows, P.J. thought he’d been sensitized to the situation, but when he felt something brush against him and noticed the proximity of the shrieking, he gripped the metallic handrail and the image of Mr. Lavergne’s face bathed in tears flashed before his eyes.